Bitesize News

Last year saw legacy giving in the UK at an all-time high, as measured by the umbrella organisation Remember A Charity. The organisation says it continued to make significant progress towards its goal of making charitable will writing the social norm.

“While it has been a challenging year for fundraising, by working together the consortium has had its most successful year to date,” it said. The proportion of people who say they have included charitable legacies in their wills is now at 17% – the highest level since Remember A Charity began monitoring in 2002. The campaign also saw record support from Government this year, including the Cabinet Office, HM Treasury, Scottish Government and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The percentage of solicitors and will writers who ‘always or sometimes’ prompt their clients has also increased, from 53% to 66% in the past five years – again, the highest level since its market research commenced in 2002.

The University of Dundee has been granted a £10m award by the Leverhulme Trust to establish a Research Centre for Forensic Science, aimed at shaping the future of the subject and ensuring it remains a vital component of the criminal justice system.

Dundee is one of four UK universities – alongside Cambridge, Liverpool and Sheffield – to win the new Leverhulme Research Centre awards. Each centre will be funded for up to £10 million over 10 years, to support fundamental cross-disciplinary research.

The award to Dundee builds on the university’s international reputation as a centre of excellence in forensic science. The new centre will be led by Professor Sue Black, director of the university’s Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification.

Leading charities and legal experts call for amendments to the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill to be adopted by a House of Commons Bill Committee today, citing serious threats to the independence of charities and charity trustees.

Despite being debated for nearly two years, charity law experts maintain there are still a number of clauses in the Bill that would seriously damage charity independence. The charity Directory of Social Change (DSC) has joined Acevo, Bond, ACF, CFG and law firm BWB in briefing MPs and proposing amendments to the Bill (see notes).

ZANE – Zimbabwe A National Emergency is a UK registered charity working to help the most destitute, vulnerable and impoverished people in Zimbabwe. The lack of media reporting could lead one to think that the emergency in Zimbabwe is over. Sadly, this is far from the case. Zimbabwean society continues to implode with malnutrition, untreated illness, escalating unemployment and fractured families.

Zimbabwe’s average per capita income in 2013 was less than £400 and 90% of the population is unemployed, making it the second poorest country in the world. Much of the population is surviving on under 35 pence a day. For a nation that was, just twenty years ago, the ‘bread basket of Africa’, this is a shocking statistic.

ZANE is the largest supplier of financial aid to elderly people in Zimbabwe, supporting over 2,600 impoverished pensioners. It also funds a club foot correction programme for children living in the high density areas in extreme poverty.

A proactive response to the recent BBC 5 Live Radio show ‘5 Live Investigates’ regarding the backlog in Digital Forensic investigations.

Stratford Upon Avon, Warwickshire, UK : 26th November 2015 : CCL Solutions Group Ltd, parent for CCL Forensics, the UK’s largest digital forensics provider would like to offer a proactive solution to the a number of recent news reports emanating from the BBC 5 Live Radio show ‘5 Live Investigates’ regarding the backlog in digital forensic investigations.

The thrust of this programme, broadcast on 8th November, was the backlog of digital-crime investigations within the Police. It raised understandable concerns that this backlog was potentially leaving suspects and victims in a state of limbo, whereby victims may remain vulnerable and suspects are free to continue their pursuits.